Things I Hate: Big Cities

Quite possibly hate is too strong a word for what I feel toward large cities. I've sat and pondered words that I could use to describe it; terrified fails, phobic isn't quite right, loathe is too bitter, detest . . . maybe that is it: I detest metropolises. I grew up in a city populated somewhere under and around 100,000 people. Mathematically that is quite a large number of people and would seem staggering if you had to meet them all at once. At the tender age of ten we moved out to the country, where we lived quite comfortably on two acres and had a half-hour drive into said city. The country life is not idyllic, but it is far more relaxing and freeing than any city dwelling I have experienced.

I like my “elbow room”. I like to keep my neighbors at a distance so great that I cannot hear them, and to have enough foliage in between us that I cannot see them and they cannot see me. I am a creature of privacy, more apt to keep my curtains drawn at all hours of the day and sometimes refuse to answer the door even when I am home. If I had things my way I would choose to inhabit a castle, with a deep water filled moat and a retractible drawbridge. Continuing with the motif people would be my enemies and I would work to keep them at bay.